Instead of a game show, everyone is watching a repeat of Law and Order except for Chaz who has turned his chair around, his back to the screen. Lennie Briscoe and Ray, the handsome Hispanic detective, parked in their unmarked cop car, are drinking coffee when their suspect emerges from a building. If it were a different night, Bunny would’ve sat down and watched Law and Order. But it isn’t a different night. It is this night, and this night will be followed by tomorrow, and Bunny is scared.
The dining room is empty except for two aides setting out the evening snack. Orange cheese sandwiches on plastic trays along with bunches of pale green grapes. Bunny sits at the table partially eclipsed by a column where she tries to focus on what has happened to her, but not what will happen to her. But, as we all know, it’s impossible not to think about something you’re thinking about. Relief is found only in distraction, and distraction, relief, comes in the form of Josh. He pulls out a chair, but before he sits down, he asks, “It is okay? If I join you?” The same as always, Josh is dressed in gray sweat pants and another worn-thin Yale T-shirt—this one sports a bulldog, faded over time and many washings. Without shoelaces, the tongues of his black Converse high-tops flop out, like the tongue of the bulldog on his T-shirt, panting. Perhaps Josh was on the basketball team in college. He is narrow and tall enough for that. He takes one of the sandwiches from the tray, and Bunny says, “You want to hear something funny?”
Josh lifts the top slice of bread as if he were expecting to find something other than the orange cheese inside. Maybe a slice of pickle, and Bunny tells him about the note she got from the Creative Writing therapist in response to her last prompt. You are not without talent, he wrote. You should think about becoming a writer.
It could be the disappointment, the hope for the pickle slice dashed, or simply a lack of appetite; whichever, Josh returns the sandwich to the tray and says, “The guy’s not a therapist. He’s an MFA student from NYU.”
“I know, but still, it’s funny.” As a therapist, the MFA student from NYU has pretty much the same credentials as a do-gooder dog, although the MFA student is, if nothing else, reliable, whereas the dog has yet to show up. Still, Bunny is certain that the dog would possess the greater sensitivity of the two. “Because I used to be a writer,” Bunny says.
Josh nods his head, and he tells her, “I know. I’m a fan. Of your books.” Then, as if to cover his tracks, as if to deny the fact that the sandwich has been touched, he adjusts its position among the other sandwiches. “I’m sorry. Fan probably isn’t the right word.” Already, Josh has had twelve treatments of ECT, but still he droops as if he were a wax candle, a taper, melting.
“Can I ask you a question?” Bunny says. “About ECT? A personal question? Do you think it’s helping? Is it doing you any good?” she asks. “Do you feel better?”
Josh pauses to consider his answer, and then he says, “Not that I can tell. No. I’d have to say no. I’d have to say no, it hasn’t done a fucking thing,” and Bunny eats a grape.